‘Fear the Walking Dead’ S2: E14 and 15 ‘Wrath’ and ‘North’

Photo Credit: AMC

3.5

Submitted by Amanda Joyce - Movie Room Reviews on 2016-10-03 09:58

As their enemies close in, Nick (Frank Dillane) has to decide whether or not he wants to remain in the Colonia. Meanwhile, at the hotel, Travis (Cliff Curtis) is thrown for a loop by some of the refugees trying to get inside. As Travis grows more angry, Madison (Kim Dickens) has to make her own decision about whether to support his actions at the hotel.

**Spoiler Alert**

This review contains spoilers for the two hour season finale of Fear The Walking Dead. If you haven’t watched the episodes, you have been warned.

The Good

Opening on Ofelia. After we didn’t get to see more of her story last week, I was concerned that we wouldn’t be seeing her again this season. Not only did we get to see her making her way along the Mexican-American border, but we also saw her show off how strong she’s become as she took on three zombies that surprised her before abandoning her stalled truck, grabbing her bag and water, and starting to walk. Ofelia has come the farthest than anyone we’ve seen, but it’s a shame that most of that development has taken place off screen.

Travis apologizes to Alicia. Travis feels badly about taking Chris’ side now that he’s seen Chris kill a man, and he tells Alicia that he shouldn’t have been blind to Chris just because he’s his son. Alicia has been getting a lot of apologies lately and I’m glad that everyone seems to be realizing that just because she made one mistake with the radio in the first season she isn’t that same naive girl.

Nick has Alejandro pegged. When he spots the fear in Alejandro’s face as he is bit by a former patient, Nick knows that everything he’s thought about Alejandro over his time in the Colonia is right. Alejandro is not immune (as predicted), but instead was bitten by the addict he tried to save. Alejandro has been keeping himself at the center of the Colonia because as the myth of his immunity spread, he had more people to protect him from the outside world. He’s just like any other power hungry leader, but the problem is here, if the people realize that, they’ll lose hope for survival.

Travis goes to town on the bromigos. While I’m not crazy about just how much the show upped the ante on the violence in this episode, Travis finally snapping was something to see. It was brutal. And despite Derek and Brandon being scum, the audience can’t help but feel bad for them as they take turns begging for Travis to stop, fighting back, and telling him that they killed his son because they had to.

Alicia has turned into a great mediator. Alicia is basically this show’s answer to The Walking Dead’s Maggie. We saw her make a few naive mistakes in season one, but quickly step up and learn how to defend herself in the new world. She’s learned to see multiple sides of a situation while everyone around her is only looking at two, and she’s still compassionate for everyone on every side. She could turn into the kind of character that Maggie has become - someone that everyone wants on their team - if the show lets her.

Alicia also kills someone. Like Madison and Travis before her, she makes the decision to protect her family by stabbing one of the men she had become friends with. The three of them are all in the same boat, and it seems like Madison is the only one who can quickly accept it, but something tells me Alicia will be able to get passed this as she experiences the world with even more threats now.

Alejandro saves his people. Despite Nick being willing to give him an easy death, Alejandro stays behind while the members of the Colonia are able to get out on foot. He manages to move their bus out of the way and let the zombies in to take care of their gang problem while everyone else is able to start making a journey north. It’s a heroic out for Alejandro, who wasn’t exactly the most heroic of leaders.

The border is a dangerous place. Not only did Ofelia get picked up by someone once she crossed the border into the US, but the survivors of the Colonia also got attacked by what looks like soldiers at the border. Surviving crossing into the US might be what season three is all about.

The Bad

Madison is not good at discretion. I would have been happy to see Derek and Brandon kicked out with Travis none the wiser. I would have been good with Chris’ fate being a cliffhanger for the show. But Madison is not good at being sneaky yet and getting the boys out of the way. She needs to get better at that.

The show saved its violence quotient for the last two episodes. While I understand Travis’ actions and I even understand the grocery guys disposing of the family they couldn’t get information out of, the show essentially went for the shock value in these two episodes instead of building to this level of blood and violence. The show has mostly been about character development, not allowing too much violence to make it in front of the camera until the most recent episodes. There hasn’t been a slow build to it like there was on the mothership series, and it’s more jarring than it is part of the narrative.

Ofelia only gets two scenes. We get to see her act tough, and then see her stopped by some form of border control, and that’s it. Why didn’t Ofelia get more story this season?

The Questions

Why the story about Chris’ death? At the end of last week’s episode, Chris was seen at the gate to the hotel by the audience. His new friends then tell a story about a car accident and him dying during it, only to reveal that they killed him because he was injured. Now, this seems like neither of these things add up. Did they try to drive somewhere after stopping by the hotel and come back? Or was the story itself not true? Did they just abandon him somewhere? Is he really dead? Or is this just a hole in the storytelling because Lorenzo Henrie was cast on Agents of SHIELD and they needed to write him out? The Talking Dead after show gave Henrie a nice send off, so it does seem like Chris was killed off, but it doesn’t make any sense with what we saw.

Will Luciana survive that gunshot wound? She has to, right? She’s unarguably the most popular addition to the show this season. The audience is not going to be happy about it if she doesn’t make it to next season.

Did Madison kill people before the zombie apocalypse? She talks to Travis about killing people to protect their family, and she adds that she’s been like this for a lot longer. Does this mean that Madison was willing to kill people long before zombies began to complicate her life?

What happened to Ofelia? I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, but she really got the shaft in this batch of episodes. We barely get to see her for the last 10 episodes, and she only appears for two scenes in the finale to place her in mortal danger.

Grading the episodes: This last two episodes certainly launched the back half of season two into high gear. I wish the rest of the season could have moved at a similar pace. Stories came together in a surprising way, and then things went wrong just as it looked like they were going to work out. A lot of fun, if not for a few missteps. B-